Willow
by Akuma no Tsubasa
Summary: They left then, leaving a tiny willow shoot basking in the warmth of the sun. An apology fic. Cloud and Zack shounenai. A smidge depressing, death and reincarnation mentioned. Concurrent to FFVII epilogue. Possibly rated high.


Hello.

This is that apology fic I promised an age ago. It took a while, mostly because I didn't know if I should really post it—it's probably not what everyone was expecting. It's a one-shot set sort of concurrent with the epilogue to the game. Lots of character death is implied, some is mentioned directly; mention is also made of reincarnation and non-graphic attempted suicide. If any of this bothers you, please keep in mind that you **were** warned.

Oh, yes. I don't own FFVII, its characters, settings, or what all. Just this fic. So please don't sue me—any money I have is from scholarships, so you wouldn't be able to get at it, anyway.

And, by the way, if you're not a reader of my works, I typically write yaoi/shounen-ai/mslash. This fic fits the pattern—shounen-ai Cloud and Zack.

Please enjoy!

* * *

**Willow**

Cloud lowered himself to the ground, propping his back against the rough rock as he stared across what had once been the Midgar Valley. The crumpled remains of the city itself were barely visible through the thick coating of plant life, and much that was exposed was red-brown with rust.

Still, even all these years later, he could clearly remember the first sight he had of the city following Holy. It lay crumpled like a careless child's discarded toy, massive steel towers twisted by the dual stresses of Meteor and Holy. The Plates had remained standing for a week following the event—just long enough to dig out anyone with a chance of survival and get out. Literally as the dust settled and the survivors stared in shock and horror, the heavens had opened up and poured rain upon the broken giant. The rain was full of lingering pollutants, the acids in it pock marking the metal and sending all living things scurrying for shelter. Acid rains had plagued the area for years to come, and nothing had grown.

The place was now a virtual Garden of Eden, grown upon the ashes of the old order and giving new meaning to the term 'urban jungle.' The vegetation was so thick you had to hack your way through, and animals of all sorts had moved in to call it home. Many were new species formed from old ones and the last of the Mako in the reactors. Midgar was nothing like it had been once.

Yet, despite all the changes, this one place had stayed the same. This ledge on the mountainside, with its scraggly bushes and a feeling like death and hope mingled together, this place where the other half of him had died—it was probably the one place in all the world that was still the same as it had been in his youth. Even Nibelheim was unrecognizable now, a bustling metropolis, the hills around it covered with spiraling windmills all the way to the horizon.

Now, Cloud sat by the side of that familiar cliff and welcomed the sensation he'd anticipated for so long. He could feel the strength ebbing out of him, like the tide going out. The Mako and Jenova in his body had given him a lifespan of over five hundred years, and he would be relieved to finally rest. Years ago, before reality had set in, he'd attempted suicide, only to discover he healed too quickly, and he would not burden anyone else with the task of killing him.

Finally, though, the end was near.

He was the last one left—well, except for Red XIII, and he was a grandfather (or was it **great**-grandfather? Cloud couldn't remember). Everyone else was dead, most long gone, although Vincent had only died in the past century. He had been Cloud's closest friend for most of the past five centuries of his life, and Cloud was still grieving.

Loneliness was the most potent force in Cloud's life, these days. Sure, Nanaki and his family remained, and some of the rest of AVALANCHE had left behind family that persisted to the present day. The effort to keep in contact with all those descendants of close friends became too much, though, especially when, if he visited, he might find some distant relative of Tifa's with exactly her eyes, one of Yuffie's many times great grandchildren with her smile… The ghosts just became too much.

Years ago, Cloud had begun to see the shades of his old friends walking the earth again. The first had been a delicate boy child maybe twenty years after Meteor. He was being bullied by the other children in his village because of his white hair and green eyes. They said he looked like Sephiroth, so he had to be evil. Cloud intervened. Everyone in that day knew who he was and the children had been awed. He had told them that Sephiroth's eyes were naturally grey without Mako, so the poor, pale-haired child, with his natural green eyes was nothing like Sephiroth. The bullies left, and Cloud helped the kid dust off. The child introduced himself simply as Orphan, and thanked him solemnly. He was, as his name indicated, an orphan, so Cloud looked in on him from time to time.

He grew up to look hauntingly like Sephiroth. He was serious and disturbingly good at anything he applied himself to, but unlike the SOLDIER General, he laughed, cracked jokes, and touched people, all casually. The Planet itself seemed to despise him—Cloud's first clue that maybe he was who he resembled—but he always dusted himself off, shook his head at his clumsiness, and carried on.

He called Cloud 'Uncle' his whole life. When he died, childless and with only Cloud to grieve for him, he promised to meet Cloud on the other side.

Cloud hadn't seen a Sephiroth shadow since.

Everywhere he turned, though, it seemed like the world was populated by the ghosts of his old friends—an airship mechanic who was eerily like Cid, a street kid with Yuffie's attitude, a waitress in a small café with Tifa's confident demeanor. Just four years ago, he'd come across a street gang whose members were almost identical in appearance and demeanor to the TURKs, a boy who looked like Vincent hanging out in the back, playing with his gun—the first time Cloud had seen a shade of his long-time friend.

Only Aeris and Zack were missing, and he felt their absence most of all.

Aeris… What had she meant to him? What hadn't she meant to him? She was all the things in the world that were noble, pure, determined, and beautiful wrapped into one. All lost at once. She had been a safe haven, never judging or demanding. When Cloud could feel Tifa's confused gaze burning into his back, would catch her giving him side-long glances as though he were a stranger—that was when he turned to Aeris to sink gratefully into her acceptance. His heart still ached for her loss.

Zack. Well, Zack was another story entirely. For a while, Cloud had been Zack, or at least disturbingly Zack-like. He still didn't always know which memories were his and which were stolen from the SOLDIER who had seen him through the worst years of their lives.

Still, no matter whose memories they were to begin with, Cloud remembered the closeness they had shared. Even before Cloud's life and sanity came to depend on Zack's presence, the two of them had been very nearly inseparable. Cloud had been an insecure small town boy when they first met, and Zack was already a strong, confident SOLDIER Second Class. Zack trained with him for months in preparation for SOLDIER entrance exams. Both had been crushed when Cloud was told he was on the standby list due to Mako sensitivity. It meant he couldn't deal with Mako well enough for them to consider him in peacetime, and his only chance of making SOLDIER was another war. And Cloud just couldn't bring himself to hope for another of those.

In the depths of that depression, Zack had become something more than just a friend.

As a lover, Zack had been every bit as tenacious, caring, and perceptive as he was as a friend. He had taught Cloud more about his own body than years living in it had, both in the realms of sex and in fighting. He'd been the pillar of Cloud's life, and had never been stingy with his affection. He joked, he laughed, he took pride in every one of Cloud's accomplishments, no matter how small, and helped Cloud be proud of himself, too.

It had been years after the Meteor crisis that Cloud had finally remembered exactly what Zack had been to him. The discovery had prefaced his first suicide attempt, and the memories led to almost every other attempt for the next decade, before Cloud had been forced to admit to himself he would never succeed. Even before he remembered, he had been unable to make deep attachments to anyone, male or female. He'd been relieved when Tifa finally moved on. Mostly he'd been content enough to be on his own in those days; only after remembering was he aware of the gnawing ache of loneliness tearing at his heart.

Despite his emotional isolation, Cloud had been far from celibate over the centuries. Five hundred years without sex was just not possible for him. Most often it had been some person he didn't know, since he couldn't bear to make many close friends after he realized he was going to outlive most everyone he knew. Occasionally, when it was not just physical release he craved, he went to Vincent. Sometimes, Vincent came to him. Either way, it was more about the companionship than the sex, though they came to know each other's bodies very well. They would talk about their respective lost loves, absent friends, and the way time started to slip away after a while. They would also talk about nothing at all.

Understanding speech and easy silence—just two more things Cloud missed about his longtime friend. Since he'd died, Cloud barely spoke anymore—not that the blond had ever had anything approaching Vincent's eloquence—there simply was no one to speak to.

Still, as they'd noted centuries earlier, time kept trickling by, only human perception warping that constant stream into the eddies and whirls of moments flying on speedy wings or dragging by. Inexorability was something Cloud appreciated after all these years. He remembered the days when he believed there was a way out of everything, but that spark had fled long ago, and only the thought that Death always came eventually brought him comfort.

Now, Cloud could feel the wind of His dark scythe passing near to him. Surely, Death was eager to take this one who had escaped him for so long. Perhaps he would strike on the next pass…

Despite everything, Cloud was a little sad. While his years had dragged on far too long, and loneliness came to be his one defining characteristic—even more than his strange eyes and hair—it hadn't been all bad. Cloud had spent most of his years breeding Chocobos, enjoying the simple animal companionship and the repetitive tasks it entailed. He remembered brilliant sunsets, stunning lightning displays, the laughter of children running in the sun. Simple things, mostly, were what made him happiest. He hoped that, when the Planet reused the energies of his soul, he'd become simple things—grass, small animals. If he happened to be human again, he hoped to be some country child, content with acres of land to raise animals on and bring up crops.

Cloud smiled wistfully, smiling across the sun-drenched Midgar valley. The sky was a perfect blue, cheerful white clouds drifting aimlessly across the vast expanse, abandoned to the wind. The smell of the thick vegetation peculiar to Midgar wafted up the cliff-side, borne on the same wind that carried birdsong to Cloud's sensitive ears. It was a perfect day. He couldn't help but hope the end really was so near—he'd like to die on such a glorious day.

He lay back in the red dirt, mind far from thoughts of the blood spilled here so long ago, not glancing sideways at the rusting Buster Sword plunged into the ground near the edge of the cliff. Instead, he closed his eyes and smiled into the sun, feeling its warmth spread heavy contentment through his body, every muscle relaxing under the soothing massage of light. He sighed softly in simple happiness, then frowned as the light abruptly dimmed. He was going to be disappointed if Mother Nature had decided to wreck his perfect day.

His eyes blinked open to stare through the branches of a great willow tree, its leaves fluttering slightly in the breeze. He sat up, gazing around himself in confusion, only to see a familiar brunet at his side, stretched out just as comfortably as Cloud had been.

Zack turned his face toward him with a smile. "Hey, Cloud. Wondered when you'd show up," he said in that cheerful voice that had haunted Cloud's dreams for ages.

All the things Cloud had imagined saying at this moment over five hundred years of life evaporated from memory, leaving him speechless. Instead, he bent his head to rest it against Zack's strong chest and breathe in the scent of him.

"I know there were things I wanted to tell you," he whispered against the fabric of that well-known uniform. "But I seem to have forgotten them all."

Zack's warm chuckle washed over his senses. "Then say the only thing that matters," the SOLDIER said simply, tilting Cloud's face up.

Just before their lips met, Cloud heard the words "I love you" whisper through the air with the slow sweetness of honey, though he could not have said who spoke them. In the end, it didn't matter. It never had mattered who said it, just that it was true.

* * *

Nanaki, sometimes called Red XIII, released his great-grandchildren to play in the lush Midgar forest, watching affectionately as they tumbled and played, and recalling times when he, too, had done that. Now, his creaky old bones wouldn't allow it, but it was nice to remember. 

He prowled up the hill with all the grace of an old predator, but none of the menace. He was here to see Cloud. His old friend's letter had reached him a short time ago, requesting to see him. It was hardly a common occurrence, so he had dropped everything he safely could in Cosmo Canyon, disentangled himself from the rest, and hopped on the first trans-oceanic bullet train available to the Kalm Metro Area. Midgar was scarcely a day away for him, even slowed by age and the shorter legs of his young descendants.

But now that he was here, he saw no sign of his ancient friend. Nanaki was old for one of his kind, but Cloud was simply unnatural. Ageless and unaging, well over five times older than humans could usually expect to live while appearing no older than his twenties, Cloud was nonetheless **old** inside, where Red had never really aged. He'd always been mature, but time simply didn't weigh him down as it did Cloud and Vincent before him.

Before stepping around the bend that shielded the cliff edge from sight, Nanaki hesitated. Usually, when Cloud was in the Midgar area, he came up here at least once. But the place seemed to be his private retreat, and he would not tell anyone the significance of it. Well, perhaps Vincent had known, but surely no other. Cloud had no other secret so closely held.

When Vincent had died, Cloud had told Nanaki where to find him—not that it was any great task, since he'd been at Lucrecia's cave. In the middle of that crystalline cavern, hollowed out by thousands of years of swirling water, sat a pillar of volcanic glass bearing familiar human countenance. That first time, Nanaki had found a tattered red cloak folded at the stone's feet and a small porcelain vase of wilted flowers. Every year since, when he went to visit the dark man's resting place, Nanaki brought flowers to fill that little piece of fine pottery, usually removing the dried remains of flowers he knew he hadn't brought last time.

Even though what had been between the ex-TURK and Cloud had been very private, very personal, Cloud had made Vincent's final home known to him. But somehow, though he couldn't imagine it, Cloud still had one thing more personal even than that. Nanaki really didn't want to intrude upon the blond's sanctuary, but Cloud would usually have come down by now if he was here. And the place felt—not hollow, precisely, because it actually felt heavy with a presence, but it was certainly still.

Quietly, Nanaki padded around the bend. And there was Cloud, lying quietly with his face turned toward the sun. Nearby, Nanaki saw the rusty form of the Buster Sword, the weapon Cloud had inherited from Zack so long ago. Cloud had mentioned once that he had used the sword to mark Zack's resting place—was the secret Cloud defended so jealously really just the knowledge of where his friend lay?

So as not to startle the blond, Nanaki took a short step closer, calling his name in a soft undertone. But Cloud didn't move, only his hair stirring gently as the wind changed direction to blow the scent of death in Nanaki's direction. Eyes wide, Nanaki stepped forward, staring at Cloud's still features. The death smelled several days old, but Cloud appeared so far untouched by scavengers or the ravages of nature. A small, contented smile curved the corners of the dead man's mouth upward—he looked for all the world as though he was simply enjoying the afternoon sun.

Sighing, Nanaki looked around, his eye catching on Ultima Weapon discarded nearby. He pulled the weapon to Cloud's right side, stood it carefully on its point, and pushed it awkwardly into the earth, mirroring the Buster Sword on his left, though Ultima Weapon stood at a slight angle because Nanaki had to lean on it to push it in.

Then Nanaki tilted his head back and howled. This brought his cubs running, half-blind with panic, but they stopped to watch their ancient forebear howl for the passing of his friend, bowing their little heads in respect. They all knew old Uncle Cloud and had grown up in an age where his name was printed in every history book. They looked at each other, then raised their high-pitched voices with their great-grandfather.

Finally, the grief abated for a time and Nanaki turned from his friend's side back to his little cubs. Tears streaked their furry faces, just as they welled in Nanaki's own eyes. Silently, Nanaki added one more place to his list of places to visit with flowers every year. The younger of the two cubs pressed miserably against Nanaki's flank, the elder trying to remain composed just a moment longer before also tucking his nose against his elder to cry some more.

Nanaki led them away from the quiet place, pausing to glance back at his noble friend—he'd saved the world, but he wasn't even going to get a proper burial. Nanaki thought that sad, but the world had moved on. There would be some comment, sad faces on people everywhere who had never so much as seen him in person, then he would be forgotten, leaving only the historians who could finally put a date of death beside his name in the records. Nanaki would never tell them where he lay—Cloud's secret place would remain sacrosanct.

Before he started tiredly down the hill, grief making him feel old as time never had, Nanaki noticed a young shoot poking from the barren earth at Cloud's head. Some little tree seed had set down there, life emerging in the place of death, starting the cycle all over again. For some reason, Nanaki thought Cloud would find that fitting.

They left then, leaving a tiny willow shoot basking in the warmth of the sun.

* * *

Hi, again. 

Well, that's it. Thanks to all my reviewers for their patience, my beta and back-up beta for their efforts, and my roommate for listening to me yammer on and on about fics. If there are any questions, comments, or concerns, please feel free to leave them in reviews—or email me.

Sincerely,

--Akuma no Tsubasa

P.S. If anyone knows someplace good to post NC-17 Castlevania fanfiction, PLEASE, PLEASE, **PLEASE** let me know!


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